Topic: Final fantasy discussion thread

@Thrillho I felt like that in God of War too. Every time I saw a slow af traversal coming, my heart sank.

@nessisonett Ducking under things or ladders I haven’t had a problem with but the monkey bars or Uncharted style “squeeze through the gap” sections are awful.

I know they can be masking loading screens but some areas have them every minute or so.

Anyhoo, finally in the Shinra building!

@Thrillho i get that but as you said they are hiding loading and the like and i would rather have to squeeze through a gap or do a slow walk and talk section than have a loading screen pop up every few minutes like in Sonic 06

@FullbringIchigo Yep lesser of two evils. I know some have been raging about it, but it is not really a huge problem, barely an inconvenience.

@JohnnyShoulder it's just a limitation of the tech

Perhaps when next gen hits with the SSD's and all they can do away or limit these kind of things

Not that it really matters because they don't detract from the game at all

The Naughty Dog-esque gap-squeezing, crate-pushing, bar climbing, etc. is absolutely the worst part of the game. HATE HATE HATE it.

Thankfully, I'm enjoying the game in pretty much every other respect.

And boy, while I kind of don't want this game to end, I also kind of want to beat it so that I can read that article on the front page of the website discussing the game's ending. I've been spoiled somewhat, but not totally, I think, so I'm not going anywhere near that article for the moment.

While I think pretty much all of the new music (read: music that's not a rearrangement of tracks from the original) is OK at best, I have a fondness for the music that plays during the dance sequence just because of how insane and fun that part of the game was.

All that gap squeezing, forced slow walking and ladder climbing wouldn't have been as bad if it had been a lot faster and had a smooth transition when exiting. I especially hated the forced slow walking sections, the correspondence with the analogue stick just never felt right. It felt like Cloud was trying to walk after somebody had cast petrify on him.

@ApostateMage That has always been my issue with contextual movement changes like forced walking. It breaks the relationship between the player and the character. Suddenly, I'm not controlling Cloud so much as I'm offering suggestions to him. And FF7R gets pretty crazy with it. Like, you'll enter one building and there'll be forced walking. Go outside and you're fine. Back and forth. It sucks.

@ApostateMage @Ralizah yeah but as mentioned before it's there to hide asset loading so the world seems bigger and more seamless, i get that people don't like it and yes even i find it annoying at times but i would rather have sections where the character slows down or squeezes through a gap over a thousand and one load screens

hey you know those Inside FFVII Remake videos Square did well they must have been popular because they did one on FFVIII Remastered if anyone wants to take a look

@FullbringIchigo I'm not entirely sure about that. There are times you slow down when you've entered a small building that already appears to be fully loaded, so I don't entirely buy that every instance of forced walking is for that reason. I think that's probably the reason for the frequent segments where you squeeze through gaps, but making Cloud slow to a crawl at certain points seems more like a deliberate design choice.

I forget to mention it, but the load times in this game are AWFUL if you try to reload a minigame (as I did frequently when going for that minigame trophies). They're launch Bloodborne-levels of long.

@Ralizah i wouldn't know about that because i never quit the mini games, even if i was losing i would carry on because it gave me extra practise to get my timing right

@Ralizah Oh yeah, I restarted the squats once and it was dreadful. Maybe not quite Lego City Undercover on Wii U kinda long, but pretty terrible for a game without much in the way of open space.

@Ralizah @nessisonett NOTHING will ever be unpatched XCOM2 slow though.

I remember going off to boil the kettle and make a cup of (well brewed) tea and the game still hadn't loaded.

As for the actual game here, I've just done the VR combat simulator section. I only have the one intel task left but getting revive levelled up is a nightmare; still over 1000AP to go and it's been on AP Plus ever since I got the latter.

I guess that's one that has to wait until the second run through.

@Thrillho nah just keep doing fights, either in the colosseum or Shinra Battle simulator (the one in the HQ not the one Chadley uses) and it will soon level up

@Thrillho Chapter 14 Colosseum Three-Person Team vs Shinra Warriors on Classic. Spam Firaga. You will farm in no time. Revive MAX is needed in all party members in hard.

Each run takes about 1 minute and 8 seconds and award you 3670 EXP and 123 AP. So, if you repeat the run five times, including loading, it will take you 10 minutes and give you 18350 EXP and 615 AP. Each run costs 300 Gil, but you earn Gil if you beat it so you never run out of money.

Not found the loading screens when quitting the mini games that bad, but I do have a hybrid internal drive in my ps4 which does decrease loading times. The ones in Fallout 4 were quite bad on a normal PS4.

The game has made it painfully clear that entering the Shinra building, like in the original, is the point of no return, so I finished up the remaining side-quests and am now in the process of grinding Colosseum challenges to level up Materia and become proficient in my various weapon skills. I've been using the AP up materia, connected via linked slots to something I want to power level, but it doesn't seem to gain points any faster than my other materia.

@FullbringIchigo The Pro level challenges offered very little room for mistake, so when I messed up early on I kept restarting to save time. The sad thing is that the load times are so long it might actually be more efficient to just sit the controller down and let the challenge finish as opposed to trying to reload it.

@JohnnyShoulder Honestly, I initially hoped S-E would go cross-gen for the sequels to this, but now I just want them to go full next-gen. It'd be worth it to remove the weird level design where you constantly have to squeeze between things to access new areas.

Honest question for those who played chapter 9 multiple times, it's not really a spoiler but I don't want to ruin any little surprise this game has to offer: